Dancing through time and space and also the fourth wall
by Cyanide Lemons
Summary: He stumbles between worlds like a drunk on a Friday, a little sloppy with it. He drags one hand between the stardust space of Limbo and doesn't bother to look at the metaphoric walls he bumps into. There's a split of a second when he's two places at once, a veritable Cheshire cat in a dark coat, and then he lands gracelessly in a dingy alleyway.
1. Chapter 1

He stumbles between worlds like a drunk on a Friday, a little sloppy with it. He drags one hand between the stardust space of Limbo and doesn't bother to look at the metaphoric walls he bumps into.

There's a split of a second when he's two places at once, a veritable Cheshire cat in a dark coat, and then he lands gracelessly in a dingy alleyway. The angry void of the Fade closes behind him, and it's over. He's stuck. It's a good thing that's what he wants to be.

There's the ping of a new quest alert and he groans loudly. He'd been hoping that a new world meant new rules, and that he might finally be rid of the annoying things. He swats it out of the air and watches it settle into his "journal". In the gloom of what appears to be dusk, the floating letters and symbols stand out brightly. His health he notices took a beating somewhere between nowhere and wherever he is now.

He shuffles a little closer to the street connected to the alleyway and peers at the abandoned storefronts. It looks foreign, too straight and clear cut, walls an off white plaster that looks too evenly mixed for what he is used to. There's advertisements plastered along the windows in garish colours, and the sign itself is lit as if with some sort of veilfire. "Maddie's Boutique" blazes across the top of the building.

The road itself is smooth and black, with weird painted lines chipped in places. Tall lamps bracket the street, leaving very little to shadow.

He casts a quick eye over the wares in the store's window, stops at a strangely carved mannequin with rather outlandish fashion draped over it, and then ruefully peers down at his own leather and dragon bone armour.

Not very subtle, if the store is any indication of the current fashion trends. He eyes the bright and thin fabric in the store one more time before starting a quick examination of the surrounding buildings. There's what appears to be an eating establishment of some kind, with the face of a woman as its crest, a store proclaiming to hold "everything under a dollar" whatever that means, and a few more clothing stores.

No blacksmiths.

He sighs a little to himself, takes a self deprecating glance at his missing arm, and crosses the street. Up close the bright fabric is highlighted by small floating letters proclaiming it to be "50's style dress. Plus 5 stealth, plus 10 charm."

His eyebrows flick up a little, and then he quickly reaches out and taps the glowing mark of his journal. Sure enough, there's an updated page with stats, stealth and charm included. The new stats seem to be equal across the board, three's for every one of them, but there's the blinking notification that he has twelve points to spend. He looks at the list of odd characteristics before closing the journal and looking back towards the dress.

Well, might as well get something good out of his skinny frame. He does some quick mental math before taking a deep breath. Fade stepping in a place without the Fade is tricky, not only because technically magic shouldn't work separated from it, but it requires only some mental prodding to phase through the glass panes and on the other side of the store.

He casts a curious eye on the interior, but doesn't waste any time outside of what is lost struggling with the mannequin and its burden. The garment seems to be clasped by a strange mechanism of metal teeth closed in the back, but it's intuitive to pull the hanging tab down, freeing the locking teeth. He plays with pulling it up and down a few times before sanity reinsert itself.

A quick switch in his inventory and he's wearing the flimsy fabric. Combined with his dusty boots and dark under leather tights, it's actually rather comfortable. The cut is probably made for someone with more of a chest then he has, but the way the sleeves pull at his shoulders make it a negligible fact.

He twirls in front of the polished mirror next to the door and nods. Perfect.

Before he Fade steps back into the street, he leaves a few gold coins on the wooden counter and hopes gold is actually worth something in this reality.

Back in the street the night air is a lot colder without his armour as a buffer and he rubs at the exposed stump of his arm as he thinks about his next move. He should find some shelter first, which will be difficult in a city so far removed from what he is used to. Still, certain skills are transferable wherever he lands himself, and it only takes a quick glace at his map to find what he's looking for.

A few streets away there's a large swath of green land, what appears to be a park for the more well to do residents. The trees are sparse, but they are there, which is all he needs really.

The walk takes a few minutes, and he doesn't come across anyone else in that time. He knows there are people, sees it in the restless shadows on doorsteps and the closed curtains of the few houses that pepper the stores and restaurants. He's not sure if the lack of traffic is normal for this time of the night, or if there's a reason behind it, but it's convenient for him.

He arrives at the park and scales the fence rather quickly, only slightly slower with the one arm then when he had both of them. It took him some time to adjust, but he has the advantage of a body used to change.

He lands with a thump, ignores the notification of -1 damage, and strides towards the middle of the park. There's stone paths' winding around, with shrubs and stone benches bracketing them every once and a while. There's a small pond with large birds floating languidly in its depths.

When he get's to where he figures the centre is, based more on instinct then his map, he scales the tallest tree he finds and settles himself on one of the upper branches. The weather is colder then he is used to without a tent, having not slept rough like this in anything but the temperate forests of his youth, but bracketed by the thick leaves its not too bad.

It's certainly enough for a night, before he finds more permanent lodgings. He's not quite sure how he is going to figure that one out, but he's not too worried. He never is.

He reaches into his inventory and takes out an oiled coat and a Nug fur bundle. The fur goes under his head and the coat goes over his chilled body, and it only takes a few slow blinks before he succumbs to sleep.

* * *

"Who uses magic to steal from a second rate thrift shop?" Fury asks, rubbing his remaining eye. There's tension in his shoulder that comes from micromanaging the type of idiots who bring petty thievery to his desk.

"Sir!" One of the agents says, before slipping a tablet set to a surveillance video loop across the table. The image is grainy and indistinct, but it clearly picks up a man in renfair armour appearing in an alley and then phasing through a rundown storefront to steal a lime green dress. Fury sighs.

"One of Thors?" He asks tiredly. He already knows the answer before the agent starts shaking their head.

"The analysis doesn't think the armour matches those showcased by Asgardians. Nor is his build similar to those that we've seen. The magic could be of the same type as Loki's, but there's no way to tell with such subpar video." They say. Fury stares at the blank expression of the agent until nervousness creeps into their posture.

"Well? What are you doing here then? Get some agents on the ground and figure out what's going on." He says finally, making the agent jump.

"Sir!" They salute, quickly exiting the room with the sort of gait that tries to showcase how much they very much aren't running.

Fury snorts. He glances at the still playing video before shoving the tablet under another pile of paperwork and mentally washing his hands of it. That's what delegation is for after all, and a small time sorcerer is the last thing on his mind when he's got clean up to do from an alien invasion. He's got bigger fish to fry.


	2. Chapter 2

His motives are rather simple when it comes down to it. He's tired. He woke up in chains at the beginning to a hole in the sky and hallucinations cluttering up his view. Suddenly he was able to hold a veritable treasure trove in his pitiful pockets and call up a magically appearing horse by whistling. His conversation topics were heavily restricted, people felt like story versions of actual people, he lost hours and days in-between important events. He became very good at finding lost alcohol.

There was a certain amount of horror at it all. But only a certain amount, because where other people were story versions of themselves, he felt constantly like a some sort of viewer. Nothing felt real.

It made it hard to actually care about what was going on, doubly so when it turned out he couldn't even die properly. After waking up again and again none the worst for wear, hours before he should have been impaled/cut/burned/eaten, he developed a truly horrendously careless attitude.

When things seemed like they would finally be over, when he finished the last quest and stopped loosing time, he had a moment of hope that it would all go back to normal. But the next time he woke up it was to chains and the still intact ceiling of Haven's dungeons.

There was no way he was doing it all over again, not when he already knew it didn't matter how many days he took to complete quests and that the timeline was practically worthless.

So he left. Or at least he tried.

Turned out there wasn't anywhere in the world he could run to, because the world didn't exist.

Outside his limited map there was just nothingness, invisible forces holding him back or pure darkness. It broke him, the knowledge that the world didn't exist. That more then likely he was crazy and dreaming, or that he was stuck in some sort of Fade dream.

It also set him free.

There's a lot of stuff you can do when you just don't give a fuck anymore. Like walking into the Fade and out into a whole new world. He was kind enough to leave his arm and the mark behind. He had gotten used to being lopsided anyways.

And so here he is, sleeping in a tree, still hallucinating but at least hallucinating different things. There's a small rodent chattering on the branch next to him, some sort of nut in its hands. Its bulging eyes disturb him enough that he ends up staring at it in suspicion instead of getting up and leaving the slightly damp tree.

Its eyes are glassy and dead looking, its small body weird and lanky. There's something almost reptilian about it, for all that it's obviously mammal.

The longer he looks at the creature the more disturbed he becomes. He has the sudden feeling that it's judging him. It just continues to stare at him, still and silent now.

"What you looking at? You don't know me, you don't know my life. I have all the same right to be here that you do." He says finally. And he thought nugs were weird looking.

"You talk to the squirrels often buddy?" A voice asks from below, and it's only though some very good reflexes that he doesn't end up falling off the branch. The rodent goes scurrying farther up the tree.

"Woah." The voice says, as he flips over so he's peering through the leaves. A man dressed in way too many layers for even the cool morning air peers blearily back. There's what appears to be a black and grey dead animal stuck to his face and escaping a beaten and holey black hat. Above his head glowing letters fade in to existence.

Winston Grant

LV – 43

Neutral

"Maybe." He says, instead of answering that this is actually his first time seeing one. He gets a suspicious, but slightly vacant look in response.

"Well you should probably head out before the cops come, Squirrel Boy." The man, Winston, says. He's swaying a little where he stands under the tree. He doesn't look so good, skin pale under the grit and a tenseness to his eyes that could be stress or illness or both. In the pale morning light he looks washed out and bleak.

"M'name's not Squirrel Boy." He says, instead of asking what a cop is and why he should leave before it shows up.

"Well what is it then?" Winston snorts. "Scott? You look like a Scott." He seems to find that extremely funny. There's probably some sort inside joke there.

"Verchiel. Verchiel Trevelyan." He says, before sitting up to pack up. He's not one to look good advice in the mouth. It's slightly awkward with only one hand, but he's used to it. He might look into what sort of prosthetics they have in this world, but unless they tend to come with mini crossbows installed he'll probably stick with the stump.

"No ways that's a real name. You're Scott now. It's either that or Squirrel Boy." Winston replies with a raspy laugh. Verchiel determines from his tone of voice which one he would prefer.

"How 'bout neither?" He says dryly, swinging down with one hand and then dropping the last few branches. Once again he ignores the -1 Health notice. Sleeping restored the rest of his HP so he's sitting comfortable.

"Whoah." Winston says again, although this time it's because he's staring at Verchiel's stump of an arm. Then his eyes stray to the very bright fabric stretched across his shoulders and his expression sort of freezes.

"Uh." He says, eyes wide.

Verchiel smiles. He knows what he looks like, knows that the disconnect between the flimsy and bright dress and his tall and wide physique is so large it's almost off putting. He's counting on it.

"I know, I'm a stud." He says dryly, shrugging his shoulders, the movement stretching the material even more. Winston swallows.

"Uh, yeah, if you're into…that…I suppose." He says, shifting his feet a little. It looks like he want's to say something else but is stuck with the sudden realisation of just how large Verchiel actually is.

The only one taller back in the inquisition happened to be The Iron Bull.

"Well I should be heading out. Got lots to do, you know. Saving orphans and taking over the world." Verchiel says, saving Winston the decision of how to act. He seems like an ok dude, but not someone who would survive long in Verchiel's company if a simple dress trips him up.

"Yeah, good luck dude. With, whatever." Winston says, inching away towards where a beat up pack is laying on the path. Verchiel waves at him and watches him leave with a smile. That just seems to disturb the man further, which might be his goal.

Test one on whether the reality he is in is real or not, done. He'll need a few more sample sizes before he can tell for sure, but he is feeling hopeful for once. Having an actually dynamic conversation with someone is a relief.

When the other man is gone from his sights, disappearing into the bush rather nimbly for someone who looks like he's approaching the wrong side of 40.

Verchiel glances once more up the tree, to where the small rodent is still staring at him, and snorts. Then he leaves to try and familiarise himself with this brand new world of his.

* * *

"I hear you're looking for a one armed anomaly." Sarah Jones says, leaning against the break room table. Amarez looks up with slight annoyance and sighs through their hands.

"Not the one you're probably thinking of. There's no way I would have the clearance for Winter Soldier bullshit." They say, when Sarah continues to stare at them levelly.

"That's what I thought, because otherwise you would have somehow gotten a promotion without me knowing and that's pure blasphemy." She says with a grin, before snagging a chair and sitting down across from them.

"So what's this one?" She asks, with an attentive and friendly face. Amarez groans because this, this right here is why they almost failed their interrogation resistance certification.

"Some sort of sorcerer with a fetish for neon green." They say, shoving the report papers over to her. They know she'll just steal them otherwise.

Sarah spreads them out, grins at the grainy image of a 6'2 man in spiky armour manhandling a mannequin with a 50's style housewife dress. She reads the very, very scant information they've been able to pull up, raises an eye at the report from a supposed eye-witness that saw "a cheerfully unhinged cripple" talking to squirrels in a park, and hums in thought when she hits the end of the file.

"Not a lot to go on." She says, putting it back into order. Amarez rests their head on the table and moans.

"Why are you after him anyways? He stole what, a 10 buck dress and slept in a park. Definitively screams criminal." She's absolutely laughing at them. They can tell.

"He also left behind five pieces of genuine gold, can walk through walls and admitted to the man in the park that he needed to 'save orphans and take over the world'." They say, only lifting their head to glare sullenly.

"Like I said, not a lot to go on." She replies, pushing the folder back.

"So?" They take it and stuff it back into its spot in their file binder. Sarah smiles.

"I'll see what I can do." She says. Her grin yells mayhem.


	3. Chapter 3

Verchiel exits the park with a bounce in his steps and a manic grin on his face. He swings his coat over his dress, buttons it to his chin against the cold morning air, and sets about finding something to eat.

The empty sleeve of his missing arm flaps about a little in the wind, and he wishes, not for the first time, that there was an easier way of tying it off. Sewing all his shirts gets tedious after a while, and pins tend to fall out whenever a fight happens.

He pulls up his map and scrutinises it as he gets to the road. The area he is in seems to be mostly residential, houses and parks butting up against each other, but there's a building marked with a small apple symbol nearby.

A marketplace of some kind he figures, and sets off. He passes a few other people on the street as he goes, dressed against the cold and in a rush, but for the most part he's left alone.

It's something of a long walk, although nowhere near the kind of walking he tended to do in the Hinterlands. A few times he thinks about testing to see if his mounts still work, but considering he hasn't seen any horses at all since entering this reality he concluded it would probably be a bad idea.

He sees a few metal contraptions that seem to have replaced animal transportation, and he knows without a doubt that Dagna would have loved to take them apart. That is to say, what Dagna could have been if she was real would have loved it.

The air is choked with some kind of smoke, but there's also an obvious lack of sewage and refuse in the street, so he considers it an equal trade off.

A flashing notification pops up, telling him that he's arrived at his destination.

He blinks and looks up, taking in the glass and chrome building in front of him. It doesn't look like a marketplace, has a distinct lack of food in the front windows or out on carts to entice passing shoppers.

It is also closed, lights off and door locked. He inspects the smooth plaque posted to the front that proclaims 'opening hours from 9-6'. He checks his displays, has to search for something resembling a clock of some kind, and then groans when he sees the time.

He still has hours to wait until opening hours. He could go explore and then come back, but he's pretty hungry right now and there's no telling when everything else opens.

He takes a look at the glass and hums in thought.

Well, he's already done it once in the past 24 hours, he might as well continue the trend.

He double checks that he's alone, and then fadesteps past the glass. He rematerializes on the other side and muffles a giggle at the sensation. Normally, fadestepping doesn't let you bypass physical objects, but he learned a work-around for that a long time ago. Ignoring reality is rather easy once you realise that nothing is truly real at all.

He lights a little veilfire and starts his inspection of the store. It is not, as he had first assumed, a market. Instead, thin metal boxes lie suspended in glass cabinets, with some tethered to polished wooden tables lined up in rows.

"Huh," he says, wandering closer. They're all different sizes, in a range of colours, with white being the most predominant. Boxes with colourful pictures line shelves on the walls, and at the far end of the room there's a large desk with a strange machine resting on it.

"Now, what could this be?" he asks the air, before poking one of the nearby boxes. When it declines to blow up in his face he picks it up and turns it around a few times, until the coiled cord attaching it to the table stops him. It doesn't appear to have a latch.

"Hmmm," he mumbles, materialising a dagger from his inventory and sawing through the cord awkwardly with his one hand. The material is smooth, and wrapped with some kind of casing. When he cuts through he can see there's actually smaller cords inside.

He holds the liberated box in his hand for a few seconds, inspecting it closely, before a previously ignored notification on his display catches his attention.

"Sync with device? YES. NO."

He blinks at it a few times, eyes flickering from the box to the display and back.

"Ah, fuck it. Might as well."

He presses yes.

—

Amelia gets the notification an hour before she's supposed to be at work. She's been a manager for just under four months, and there's a second, as she's reading the automated message on her phone, that she thinks she's being pranked.

But no, the number is the one set up by the security company in case of break-ins, and it even has the store's registration number in it.

She calls her team leader.

"Shawn? I'm going to need you to go down to round up everyone who's supposed to work today. Makes sure you do a count of keys, it seems the alarm went off this morning but the door alarm didn't. I'll call you again when I'm at the store, hopefully we won't need to call the police."

—

They need to call the police.

—

He has a killer headache, the type that turns the world fuzzy and off kilter and drives you slowly mad. It feels somewhat like that first trip out of his original world boundaries, in that weird void of paper walls and empty space.

This time though, it's accompanied by an extremely annoying voice buzzing in his ear.

"Please input your Apple ID and password after device restart. Please download the latest service pack for complete integration."

"I know! You've said that a million times already. I don't even have an Apple whatever," Verchiel grouses, rubbing his forehead.

The worst part of it all is that he is still hungry. He's not sure if his map is malfunctioning, or if there really isn't any any sort of market nearby, because he still hasn't found one. All the symbols he thinks mean food end up meaning clothing stores, or more of those box stores.

He's not even sure what people in this universe eat. Hopefully they have bread. And ale.

"Look, can't you just shut up for a minute while I find somewhere eat?" he complains to the air, frustration colouring his voice and turning it hard.

"Uh, dude," a voice says from behind him, and it's probably a good thing that all his weapons require deliberate retrieval because his first reaction is to stab it.

"What?" he snaps, turning around. A youth in baggy clothing blinks blearily back at him. They're dressed in thick knitwear, mostly in greys and dark purples, and it's almost impossible to see their face under the thick black frames over their eyes.

"Do you like, not know how to google stuff?" they ask. Their eyes are very, very big under the glasses, and very, very red. Like they haven't slept for weeks, or as if they had to walk through the sandstorms in the 'Wastes.

"Uh," he stalls, trying to think if he's ever heard of 'googling'.

"Look, I know Google is like, secretly evil and stuff or whatever, but if you're gonna spend fifteen minutes ranting about not finding food right in front of the library entrance, you might as well go in and search it up yourself," the teen continues, rubbing at their eyes, "or at least, like, move."

He shuffles to the side and watches them stumble through the large wooden doors he had been ignoring up to that point.

After tripping out of the apple-whatever store, head spinning, he had picked a random street and walked until he had found a little shelter from the wind.

Now that he looks closer, the building does have a worn sign proclaiming it as a library. He had written it off as condemned, considering the mix-matched bricks and the very dusty windows.

The only libraries he's ever seen have been in Skyhold, he can't quite imagine a whole building devoted to books. He rubs his hands together and grins to himself.

"Please input your Apple ID and password after device restart. Please download the latest service pack for complete integration."

"Fuck!"

—

It is an entire building devoted to books. And more black and white boxes.

He stares distrustfully at the row of them, edging carefully away from where they sit gleaming on one side of the room, and starts wandering the shelves.

There's a few tired looking people sitting in overstuffed chairs, an angry-looking child staring at a woman chatting at someone by a desk covered in paper, and a single fat cat.

He stares at it.

The cat stares back. And then proceeds to start grooming itself, back firmly turned away.

He snorts to himself and then has to pause, trying to remember if he has actually ever seen a cat back in his world. There must have been, if he knows what they are, but he can't quite remember.

He frowns, but then gets distracted by the very colourful cover practically shoved in his face by someone re-shelving books. He takes a step back, mostly so he doesn't have to look at it cross-eyed, and ignores the woman who is very deliberately ignoring him as she shoves stacks of books into overfilled shelves.

'The Secret to Personal Banking' looks like it's trying too hard to appear fun and exciting, with a happy looking man smiling up from the glassy paper. Verchiel stares back, half expecting the small picture to start moving, unnerved by how real looking it is.

He picks it up.

[New codex entry unlocked!]

"Oh, right. Those are a thing," he says, startling the employee on his right, before he taps on the flashing icon and time stills.

His codex pops up, bypassing the obnoxious box still asking for his password. He scrolls through his list, absently noticing some of them have been updated, before the implications of the book actually penetrate.

He glances from the shelves with thick volumes, and slowly starts to smile. There has to be at least five hundred books in this one building alone. Which means five hundred codex entries.

He quickly checks the new entry, noting the summary and then the much longer text underneath, and then scrolls through some of his previous entries to try and see if the amount of content stays the same.

As he does, his hand pauses on one he doesn't recognise.

[Apple ©]

[The History of the World's Largest Technology Monopoly]

[Steve Jobs: Charitable Entrepreneur or King of Corrupt Capitalism?]

[By: Bill Gates]

He groans to himself. Of course, he spends forever arguing with a repeating voice, and he could have just checked the codex and probably gotten all the information he needed. He goes to click on it, but then notices that there's another one underneath, with a little glowing light flashing at him.

[Manual_v5]

[Unidentified Device]

[Ids and Passwords]

"That looks promising, I think. Maybe?" He mutters to himself, clicking on it.

[Welcome to your new iPhone 5s. Please follow these following steps to setup your account and enjoy all our exclusive features.

Step one: Choose your language.

Step two: Login with your AppleID. If you do not have an AppleID, please create one.

Step three: Please review your settings. This can be done at any time after login.

Step four: Sync files with previous Apple devices.

Thank you, and have a good day.]

That's all that there is. He blinks at it, rubs his face in thought, leans back to see if tilting the display will reveal anything new, and then hums decisively.

"I have no idea what any of that means."

The text starts flashing at him. He jumps.

"Ok! No reason to get snippy at me, if you would just show me where to do these things, we might actually get somewhere."

A new display pops up.

[Create new AppleID?] [Yes] [Yes]

"Now I feel like you're just messing with me," he says, hands on his hips. A new box pops up.

[Erase all saved data?] [Yes, because I'm an idiot.] [No]

"Ooooh kay. This is. Kinda creeping me out. No. And yes to the ID, I guess." He flicks the last box away, and then taps one of the yes's on the first one.

[Name:_]

[Age:_]

[Username:_]

[Email:_]

[Password:_]

[Security Question: Please chose one.]

"Annnnd we're back to not understanding anything. Ok, put Verchiel down for name. Age, whatever. I'm not even sure what a username or email even is, uh, password is 'nug shit' I guess."

[Invalide password. Please use at least 8 characters, one special character like ! or . and one number.]

"I'm. I don't. What? Exclamation mark? One number for what?"

[Password accepted.]

"No, wait. That's…oh whatever." He rubs his eyes. If possible the displays have gotten more annoying since he entered this new world, which was really the exact opposite of what he was trying to accomplish.

[Account created. Please review your information.]

[Name:Verchiel]

[Age:NaN]

[Username:DefaultDAI]

[Email:glitch ]

[Password:**************************************************]

[Security Question: First Kill]

"I'm. Going to assume that's right." He says, completely fed up with the whole process.

[Login successful. Review your settings now?]

"No. Just, get me back to the codex. I still need to find food."

[Sync your—]

"NO."

[Setup complete. Initi—]

"—alising. Thank you, your settings indicate you have selected AI assistance. Standard model SIRI, how may I help you?" a voice says, distorted and vaguely female.

Verchiel screams.

—

Sarah stares at the surveillance recordings and hums in thought, arms crossed. Amarez, making their third coffee of the day, grunts in answer.

"And you're sure it's not a glitch?" she asks, rewinding to play the clip again. On screen, a one armed man holds an iPhone awkwardly, completely still.

"If it is, every single camera in a radius of half a mile experienced it at the same time," Amarez answers, attention only half on the monitors.

"So what, what's the purpose of changing the time stamps. He's just standing there." She complains, watching the numbers in the corner skip from 7:02:30 to 7:14:05. There's a pause while the screen flashes, pixels glitching out, and then it's back to 7:02:31.

"I'm thinking time travel," Amarez muses, "Localised, obviously, and oddly stable."

"No way, this looks more like one of those tech jammers," Sarah refutes, straightening. Dark eyes narrow at her.

"You want to bet on that?" Amarez counters.

"Loser has to do the mission report backlog," she snaps back, sticking her hand out to shake on it.

—

Verchiel takes another bite of a slightly drooping sandwich stuffed with lettuce and some sort of sliced meat, and watches his MP rise.

Another new feature, he muses, used to having to either wait or else use potions to recover after spells. Getting his current bounty was an exercise in overly complicated manoeuvring, which required using his fadestep spell about fourteen times in a thirty-minute period. He's come to realise that he doesn't know any other good spells outside of combat.

Not only was he having to go by the guidance of 'SIRI', but he realised as he eventually got to the closest café that he didn't have any of the local currency. Using, once again, fadestep to steal away with one of the sandwiches in the display had made him realise that he really should have looked into becoming a rogue instead of a sword-swinging mage. Obviously he is just more suited towards being a career thief.

"Yo, SIRI, what's the local currency here anyways?" he asks, mouth half full with delicious bread and meat.

"US dollars are used throughout the United States of America," the mechanical voice answers.

He nods.

"And, how much would you say one US dollar is compared to, say, 1 ounce of gold?"

"The current rate of exchange between US dollar and gold is 1 XAU = 1,232.56 USD."

"Huh," he mumbles. His eyes glance towards his gold count in the corner.

"How much would 49,4128 ounces of gold go for?" he asks slowly, mind turning.

"Calculating… 49,4128 ounces of gold would be worth 609042407.68 USD. That is, a literal fuckton."

"Oh."

He's thinking of all the things he could buy with that much, mostly trying to imagine the sort of enchanted armour he would be able to fund, when a muffled noise behind him has him pausing.

He pops the last bit of sandwich into his mouth and stands up. Another muffled thump drifts pass, this time accompanied by a yelp.

"I'm sorry, I could not catch that," SIRI says, and he waves the dialogue away.

The area he's at is nestled in between two large residential buildings, a dark and trash filled alley of some kind. Stairs going up to square windows line the sides, and there are large blue boxes of some kind butted up against the brick.

The light is pretty bad, but he can just make out a red health bar depicting a single enemy up ahead.

[Mugger lvl. 14]

"Huh," he mutters, tugging at the bit of green lace peeking out of his cloak. He flicks a finger over his inventory and selects one of his many blades. After a little more consideration, he switches out the broadsword for a dagger. No reason to bother with overkill with something that's only level fourteen.

Sauntering closer to the red glow and strange noises brings him around one of the blue boxes and into a slightly more open area. There's a doorway to one of the buildings, and it's there that he finds his prey.

A man dressed in drab clothing is holding an equally drab looking woman up against the door, knife in hand. The woman, looking equally parts terrified and pissed, is holding up an overly stuffed bag for perusal.

"Oi," he calls, hiding his own knife up his sleeve, "whatcha doing?"

Both set of eyes go swinging his way, before the woman, taking advantage of her attacker's distraction, knees him in the crotch and dances away from his suddenly lax grip.

"YOU FUCKING BITCH," the man screams, but she's already running straight down the alley and out of sight. He goes to follow, but Verchiel steps in front of him.

"Oi, I thought I asked you what you were doing?" he says, teeth bared. The man screams in answering rage and rushes him.

"Tsk, tsk. Sloppy," Verchiel muses, dodging a punch and bringing a knee up to nail the mugger in the stomach. He's truly thinking of just roughing up the man, considering he has no real moral high ground when it comes to stealing, but that becomes a moot point when, stumbling away, the man reaches into his coat and pulls out something metallic.

There's a crack in the air, and Verchiel can feel something wet go sliding down his face. Wide eyes meet his.

He swings an arm out and drives his knife into the man's throat. Bloody foam bubbles up.

"Fuck," he says, wiping his face. Blood drips down, and he stumbles back. Some sort of projectile, he thinks, and curses again.

[Low health detected, health potion suggested.]

With numb fingers he opens his inventory, glad for the first time that the menus stop time. He doesn't want to find out what dying would be like in a world without save states.

—

"Ma'am, please calm down and repeat your emergency."

"I'm telling you, he took a bullet to the brain and then STABBED the dude in the throat! That's some fucked up shit."

"Police are on route to your location, please stay on the phone."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about that. I want to see where this goes."

—

Verchiel thumbs the small metal lump, health slowly ticking up, and eyes the cooling corpse on the ground. The sound of screeching alarms in the distance makes him think he probably shouldn't have stabbed the man.

"SIRI, what's the consequence for killing someone?" He asks.

"In New York, murder outside of undeniable self defence is prosecutable by a) death b) life without parole c) 25 years to life in prison. This is where I would suggest you run."

"Oh."

He runs.

—

"Did he just…?" Amarez mutters, trying to follow the blue blur as it dashes across alleys and crowded streets, blue and red lights flashing behind it.

"Hmm, so the magic doesn't just let him move through physical objects." Sarah says. On screen an old woman is almost run over before the man, still mostly blue and incorporate, jumps up and over her.

"Doesn't appear to be something he can sustain either. Look, he has to keep reapplying it." Amarez taps one finger on the screen where the blur slows down just enough for them to catch a second of the armless man's face, before blinking out of view again.

"And, he has to kick off when he does it. I would say that the main purpose is to boost speed, considering how annoying it would be to have to run every time you want to walk through walls." Sarah muses.

Amarez nods, forgotten coffee cradled in his hands and eyes wide.

There's a pause as the man plasters himself to a side street wall and the police go careening past.

"Think we should call it in? I mean, they try, but the police are seriously outgunned when you consider magic and the ability to heal from a gunshot wound," they ask. Sarah snorts.

"Despite being able to kill a mugger, after already taking a fatal shot to the head, he's not really what you would call SHIELD-worthy, is he? I mean, we're supposed to contain international threats, this is more for someone like Spiderman to take care of," she says, leaning back.

On screen, a red and black shape descends next to the armless man.

"Oh."

—

"Look, all I'm saying is, if I had killed a man, you would know," Wade says, draping himself over his pal Spiderman, "possibly because of the explosions."

"That's why I'm here, talking to you. Because I know you killed a man." Spiderman returns, wry. He ducks under the other man's arms and turns to face him.

"The police scanner has been all over the place with chatter about 'a self-healing vigilante' killing a mugger all morning. That sounds an awfully lot like you."

Wade adopts a thinking pose, mask scrunched up in thought.

"Nope, the only thing I remember killing this morning was a giant turd. Boxes! Did I kill anyone this morning and then forget it in a haze of insanity?" he flings his arms out and then cocks his head to the side, listening.

Spiderman groans, knuckling his eyes through the mask. He's not too sure why he bothered tracking down the other man, except some vague feeling of being responsible for the sometimes-hero. Considering the amount of time they end up having to save the day from everything from Russian mafia to mass-manufactured super robots, he's gotten used to cleaning up after the 'merc with a mouth'. At this point, he might even be sad if SHIELD ended up locking him up, like they keep threatening.

In the distance, the sounds of sirens go speeding by. Both men pause and turn towards the sound.

"You know what I bet? Some sticky-fingered dudebro has written himself into the comic and taken my honorable name! Quickly! To the Batmobile!" Wade cries, snagging Spiderman by the spandex and throwing both of them off the roof and towards the sound.

"Whoah!" Webs cushion their fall, but it still takes a second for Spiderman to right himself out of the tangle of limbs and sit up.

Wade, dangling from the web with only his legs stopping him from falling the rest of the way off, throws a thumbs up. His head is an inch away from an open dumpster.

"Perfect landing!"


End file.
